ABSTRACT
Dr. Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine, a 1923 absurdist comedy by French playwright and novelist Jules Romains, features a plot, dialogue, and characters that align with Michel Foucault’s observations on the development of medical practice in his 1963 work The Birth of the Clinic. Romains’ satire reflects an exaggeration of reality, confirming Foucault’s description of the emergence of the medical gaze, the grammar of signs, and hospitals as mechanisms to gather wealth. The interplay of Foucault’s and Romains’ works can help us to understand how doctors perform their roles both as diagnosticians and subsequent healers, how physicians and patients enact their roles in clinical encounters, and the ethics of health care as a business.
